I was thinking of oppertunities for Linux Mint in schools. Most of the schools here in the Netherlands use Microsoft Windows and I was thinking of a promotion via the Press. Schools must be "Open" and Windows is "Closed". Has anyone ideas of how I (we) could do this?

I'm not sure how it is in the Netherlands, but in the US the schools do not decide which computers or systems to use.

The individual school districts come under the individual 'State" School Boards ... there are corporation sellers and lobbyists that petitions and sells their products to the main buyers for the school districts.Microsoft, hence, Windows is the main OS pre-installed,in the computers, that are bought by the school board buyers. Microsoft does have a marketing plan.

Since most of Linux / Open Source doesn't have salesmen or a marketing plan ... it's hard to get your foot in the door with the right people.

So, if you know the right people, the buyers for the state run school boards ... then, you might have a chance. You would also, have to be 'representing' a major Linux OS and computer manufacturer.

I think the only Linux/Unix systems that might have a marketing plan are Novell, Red Hat and Ubuntu (there might a a couple more)But, they are marketing primarily the Operating Systems and not computers with Linux pre-installed to corporations.

Most of the big schools (and all of the smaller schools) are prey to Microsoft and the lobbyists as to which and what kind of computers they have.In the community colleges, technical colleges and and universities that offer IT or computer courses ... if you use your own laptop ... they are usually MS Windows required.

Boy ... that sounds 'grim' ... and we expect our kids to get a proper education?

I was talking, on-line with the son of an ex-girlfriend recently. He is attending the Devry Technical College in Texas.He said that most of his computer courses are in Windows Vista (he personally has W-7) but that he took a separate IT class for 'no credit' in Unix-based systems.(This is funny) That in the class they originally stated by learning Fedora 9 ... but have recently advanced to using Ubuntu 9.04 He didn't even know there were 'so many' Linux OSs ... I introduced him to DistroWatch.com

heck, i live in the netherlands to. when i was in high school (in NL it is a little diffrent than the US so you can't actually call it high school) whey weren't even aloud to use openoffice, well i wasn't going to buy a office license either, my IT teacher thought is was ok, but the school disagreed.

(i am NOT part of the gizmodo team or related to them, just before anyone askes;) )

I agree, it would be nice to get Linux into the school systems. The closest success story I have is a friend of mine convinced an elementary school (in the U.S.) to switch to OpenOffice in order to save the school's budget.

kbkatz1 wrote:I agree, it would be nice to get Linux into the school systems. The closest success story I have is a friend of mine convinced an elementary school (in the U.S.) to switch to OpenOffice in order to save the school's budget.

Great idea! I have referred people to OpenOffice as well because they wanted something to handle .doc files but didn't want to pay for Microsoft's product. In reality they were just trying to beg me for my copy that I have. I just kept referring them to OpenOffice.

"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." -Steve Ballmer

I can see why a school would not want to run Linux. I took a photography class some years back and they, of course, used Windows at the school. For editing pictures, they used Adobe Photoshop, which Adobe for some reason refuses to release on Linux. I am not going to lie, GIMP does not compare, but is a great alternative to that overpriced software.

Some jobs would require the knowledge of Photoshop and not GIMP. For everything else though, I do not see why they could not use Linux.

Cheesethief wrote:For editing pictures, they used Adobe Photoshop, which Adobe for some reason refuses to release on Linux.

I don't know why Adobe would not want to make a Linux compatible Photoshop? Seeing that Adobe Software is owned by MicroSoft.

I was just perusing through Wiki ... and I found that Comcast Cable is also, owned by MicroSoft. I didn't know that

MicroSoft is "invested" in several hundred Computer Software companies.Apparently, Microsoft is vested in the Personal Computer (PC) Software market ... and they are not going to give it up, without a fight.

Cheesethief wrote:For editing pictures, they used Adobe Photoshop, which Adobe for some reason refuses to release on Linux.

I don't know why Adobe would not want to make a Linux compatible Photoshop? Seeing that Adobe Software is owned by MicroSoft.

I was just perusing through Wiki ... and I found that Comcast Cable is also, owned by MicroSoft. I didn't know that

MicroSoft is "invested" in several hundred Computer Software companies.Apparently, Microsoft is vested in the Personal Computer (PC) Software market ... and they are not going to give it up, without a fight.

Flash is also made by Adobe, yet they release it for pretty much all os'. Besides that Photoshop is released on Mac as well. The are losing customers by not offering it for other operating systems.

vrkalak wrote:I don't know why Adobe would not want to make a Linux compatible Photoshop? Seeing that Adobe Software is owned by MicroSoft.

I was just perusing through Wiki ... and I found that Comcast Cable is also, owned by MicroSoft. I didn't know that

MicroSoft is "invested" in several hundred Computer Software companies.Apparently, Microsoft is vested in the Personal Computer (PC) Software market ... and they are not going to give it up, without a fight.

Not sure where you pull any of that from. Adobe has been it's own company since it was founded.

Comcast isn't owned by Microsoft either. They received some investment from Microsoft in 1997 but that's it. I'm sure that has been paid back in full as Comcast has $36 billion in revenue annually.

"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." -Steve Ballmer